A Blue Streak

Brilliant blue and ubiquitous, they appear by the thousands below you as the plane descends toward LAX. They are the shimmering symbols of Los Angeles--and we don’t mean backyard swimming pools.

No, those eye-stingingly blue splotches are polystyrene tarpaulins. They hold parts of the city together. And their abundance often flags the borders between the city’s Winnersvilles and Losertowns.

Emblems of transition, blue tarps can signify bootstraps hope or last straw despair, a winter raincoat for a trusty swamp cooler or particularly bright litter in the corner of a broken woman’s yard of dirt and dog poop.

When the roof on producer Aaron Spelling’s 56,000-square-foot mansion leaks, he sues for $5 million and, presumably, it gets fixed, tout de suite.

Many more Angelenos drape a blue tarp over the damaged shingles and wait for the sun to shine and their fortunes to rise.

Produced at factories in China, South Korea and Taiwan, blue tarps, along with their less-popular beige, green and silver cousins, have poured out of hardware, sporting goods and discount stores, selectively insinuating themselves into the warp and woof of Southern California life.

Descend, for instance, from the rural hills of Turnbull Canyon above Whittier, and zigzag west through the neighborhoods spanning Beverly Boulevard and 3rd Street.

The perfect canvas umbrellas visible on the patios of hillside homes attract a flock of similar upscale patio accouterments. This is not prime blue tarp turf.

Yet even here, the first blue tarp appears after just a few blocks: A 100-square-foot swatch of the crinkly fabric fluttering between a single car garage and the two aluminum poles Ed McArthur has sunk into joint compound buckets now filled with concrete.

McArthur, 29, is a walking gallery of tattoos, which he says reflect his Gaelic heritage. He pulls the poles into the alley, then backs his Chevy pickup--dual wheels, chrome spoiler--under the temporary shelter.

McArthur says he is on permanent disability and spends his afternoons beneath the tarp, going over his truck with Q-tips and a toothbrush. “To get the best detail,� he says, “you’ve got to keep the paint cool.�

He hopes the pickup will make the cover of Chevy Truck magazine.

Continue west and more tarps appear, as blue as freeway call box signs, IHOP roofs and the plastic gum stoppers in men’s urinals.

In a storage yard alongside the San Gabriel River, blue tarps cover the anodizing sides of old motor homes and once-beloved boats that haven’t seen a bass in ages.

In an equipment yard across the San Gabriel River Freeway, someone has halfheartedly tossed a blue tarp over some ruptured cement bags.

Behind a neat, two-story beige and brown stucco Pico Rivera apartment complex, renters have enclosed their matchbox patio with a makeshift blue tarp structure.

Down the road, a battered Porsche rests in a frontyard, carefully draped with a blue tarp that suggests the owner’s ascension to the good life has been detoured. In another yard, a blue tarp has blown into a heap, revealing a decomposing Baja Bug and fading hopes of blissful weekends in the dunes.

A Thrifty store in Montebello displays its assortment of generic blue tarps, made in China, and on sale in three sizes: 5 feet by 7 feet for $7.99, 10 feet by 12 feet for $9.99 and 12 feet by 16 feet for $11.99.

The label boasts many features: “Tear Proof . . . Washable . . . Waterproof . . . Metal Grommets every 3 feet . . . Mildew Proof . . . Laminated woven polystyrene . . . Reinforced roped edges.�

As many as a dozen companies distribute the tarps, says Bob Piscatelli, National Sales Manager for Standard Sales Inc., which offers blue tarps in 12 sizes, from 5 feet by 7 feet to 30 feet by 60 feet, under the Stansport brand name.

Piscatelli clearly has little interest in this humble product but skeptically agrees to scan the books for his western sales figures.

“My God,� he says. “It’s a lot of units. A lot of units. I’d never believe it. These figures are incredible. I’m looking at 160,000 to 170,000 units just last year.�

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In fact, there would appear to be more blue tarps than that sheltering vendors at the city’s flea markets, shielding area campsites and covering rubbish-filled pickups at county landfills.

And blue tarps tend to migrate.

Pocket communities near downtown Los Angeles, burrowed into weedy hollows and carved into the sides of hidden knobs, hide blue tarp room additions and graffiti-splattered blue tarp retaining walls.

For some, the tarps are bright blue exercises in futility, colorful shrouds for homes or cars or lawn mowers already returning to the dust. Others unfurl blue tarps joyously, successfully capturing more space, more comfort, more happiness.

On an East L.A. side street, behind a house beautifully landscaped with orange roses, the Baeza family often savors life beneath a high pipe framework covered with silver and blue polystyrene tarps. The family’s tarp cathedral arches over a concrete driveway and patio, covering a pool table, an exercise machine, a cage of tittering birds and a ‘60s vintage Impala.

It is perhaps 10 degrees cooler here than in the wilting afternoon sun.

“Oh, we have a lot of parties here,� says Juanita Baeza, smiling at a string of “Happy Birthday� flags dangling in a chain-link fence.

Farther west, 3rd Street cuts through neighborhoods where the blue tarps all but disappear.

In Hancock Park, a maid in a pink uniform walks down a circular brick drive. No blue tarps on that block.

A few streets over, another drive displays stacked bags of concrete, sans blue tarps, suggesting affluent confidence in timely completion of the project.

In Beverly Hills, where 3rd Street runs into the mountains, the eye darts back and forth, drawn to bright splotches of blue. But these are Westec security signs, planted on perfect lawns and wrought-iron fences that don’t need blue tarps to deflect diesel exhaust or screen out gangbanger’s stares.

In another niche of the city, though, the blue tarp is integral.

“It’s called survival,� says a man by the name of “Clinton.�

Clinton sits on a concrete wall beneath the 6th Street bridge near downtown Los Angeles, one of a dozen or so people living in a village of lean-tos made from cardboard, old sleeping bags, tires, and--predominantly--blue tarps.

“People find ‘em or people give ‘em to us,� Clinton says.

Gangsters have decorated the bridge’s concrete stanchions with Rollin’ 40s and 60s markings. Rap by the late Tupac Shakur wafts from the boombox of a young man sitting on an old easy chair.

Clinton, 36, says crack cocaine and alcohol led him to this blue tarp town.

But he just got a job and he’s about to go into rehab. He smiles. “It’s gonna get greater, later,� he says--a motto that maybe should be emblazoned on blue tarps everywhere.